Disclaimer: Fushigi Yuugi wa watashi no series ja nai. ^^;;;;;;;;; Or whatever.

Warnings: Tasuki language. Styrofoam. Shounen ai. Probably melodrama and sap. **nod** I can’t tell.

Notes: Ahhhhh, forgive me for taking so long with this chapter…and forgive the crappy chapter title. ^^;; I am all done with school now, which should mean that I have lots of time to write stuff…however, it also means that I must battle with my brother for the use of the computer, with my parents for the use of my time (for example: I have just sat down at the computer, when my mother comes down and wants me to a) run an errand, b) eat dinner, c) clean the house, or d) transpose a song on the piano…I’m not kidding. That happened today.), and with my own self, since part of me is very much addicted to Spider Solitaire and refuses to stop playing it. --;;; Anyway. Here’s the new chapter, and I hope you guys like it. ^^;;

Taka was the first one to speak.

"Gone??!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?!"

"What the fuck d’ya think he means, Scrooge?!" Genrou shouted. "Is he speakin fuckin parseltongue??! THEY’RE…FUCKIN…GONE!!!"

"The woman in the apartment next to them said she hadn’t seen any of them for over a week," Myojuan went on, holding out his hand to stop Genrou’s ranting.

Shaking his head, Sai pressed his lips together. "Miboshi."

"But hold on, Ch…Chuin said that he was the only one Miboshi had gotten," Taka reminded us uneasily.

Our friend the med student shook his head. "No. He said that, as far as he knew, he was the only one. That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have taken them separately, kept them unaware of each other, in case one of them should ever be captured…like this."

Kaen…no. Not Kaen.

A dark feeling rose up inside me as I remembered our cynical friend; the way she’d pretend to be tough and scowl like the dickens one moment, then grin and kiss your cheek the next. We weren’t close, but we were close enough for me to care about her, and to feel real panic at the prospect of her in the clutches of whatever Miboshi was…at the possibility that he might make her evil, as well. And Doulin, who stayed up to play video games with me when the parties got too rowdy, who appeared so innocent before she started slapping you into the next world…could she be possessed as easily as Chuin? Even Lanva…I didn’t know him well at all, but still…

"We’re going to have to be extremely careful," Sai said softly, raising a hand to my shoulder as if he didn’t even realize what he was doing. "If Miboshi does have them…we can’t take chances. If we meet them, from now on, we can’t trust them. He might have already gotten to them, turned them against us."

"But…" Miaka began, but bit her tongue, understanding that Sai was right. I knew she didn’t like the idea of not trusting her friends; I didn’t either. I was actually beginning to feel sick. What is friendship, after all, but love and trust?

Inching closer to Sai, I wrapped my arms around his waist from the side and leaned into his shoulder, craving the contact that told me he was himself still. Chuin masquerading as Sai was one thing…but if Sai himself was ever caught and turned against me…against us…

Gen-chan sighed as Sai squeezed my shoulders gently, and ran a hand though his red hair. "Well. Once again, we’re royally fuckin screwed. Not only might our goddamn friends be possessed by a fuckin infanticidal floating gnome, we now have no fuckin magnet to lead us to other fuckin Seishi before the fuckin floating gnome can get them first and turn the whole fuckin seishi world against us!"

"Except for that guy in…" I heard myself murmur, and stopped short. Gen-chan’s head snapped over to me, and he stared at me with wide eyes…and I knew he understood what I meant.

The others, meanwhile, were looking at us strangely; although my own face was fixed on Genrou, I could tell out of the corner of my vision. There was silence for a good while as I worriedly searched his eyes for an answer…did he feel the same thing I did?

"Ryuuen?" said Myojuan, glancing from me to Genrou and back again. "What do you mean? Do you know another of the Seiryuu seishi?"

"What guy, sweetheart?" Sai said softly, speaking to me as if I was sick, or something…I guess I must’ve looked a little out of it; I mean, I’d just grabbed him and all that, like some kind of scared kid. Okay, so I was a little scared, and I’d needed to feel him close to me…stupid stupid dependent me. But it made me feel bad, being treated like this. Even if it was comforting, I didn’t want Sai to think that I was just a child whom he had to take care of and treat with kid gloves.

"Ryuuen," Sai said again, still patient and quiet, "who are you talking about?"

The importance of my memory came leaping back in a flash, and with a quick, unspoken promise to Sai that, somehow, I’d show him he could depend on me, too, I shook myself out of my stupor and took a breath.

"At the police station," I said steadily. "Genrou and I…When Genrou was arrested last fall, and Doukun and I went to bale him out…the guy running the place just…let him go. We felt something, a connection; we both did, I know we did…but we didn’t think it was that important…" I looked hurriedly over at Genrou, who was pursing his lips and nodding.

"I think he’s a seishi," Genrou mumbled, glancing briefly at the floor before meeting my eyes again and catching my affirmative nod. "Now that we’ve been seishi long enough to recognize the goddamn seishi linkage feelin, I think…he might be worth checkin out."

That caught their attention, if it hadn’t been caught already. Miaka and Taka both took big steps toward us, babbling frantic questions; Genrou cursed and tried to ward them off, while Sai and Myojuan tried to silence them.

"What did he look like?" Sai demanded firmly, cutting through the other voices. Suddenly, he seemed uneasy…maybe even a little angry…and I swallowed. It wasn’t because of us, I was almost sure of it; so that meant…

"Umm…big," I said. "Blue eyes, blond hair…"

"GYAHH!!!" Taka and Miaka exclaimed, looking positively horrified. Genrou looked slightly puzzled at their outburst—I know I was—and Sai still seemed relatively upset. Myojuan was staring off into space.

"Does he have a long nose?" Taka asked.

"And is his face scary, like this?" Miaka added, making a disturbing face.

"And does he glare at you, like this?"

"And does he smirk at you and make you feel like you’re the size of an ant and…"

"Ahhhhhhhhh, stop it, stop it, you guyssss!!" I cried, waving my hand at them. "Stop looking at me like that, you’re creeping me out!"

"He seemed pretty fuckin normal to us," Genrou said, raising an eyebrow. "Which is more than I can fuckin say for some people…"

"Nakago," said Myojuan breathily, and to my horror, he seemed on an emotional level with Sai…serious and pale and slightly…hostile. And I’d never seen either of them like that.

"Sai?" I said timidly, wanting to know what was going on, but unsettled by this different attitude.

"It’s all right," he said automatically, but didn’t even look down at me. "We have to get him before Miboshi does…if Miboshi hasn’t gotten him already."

"If he didn’t confront Tasuki, Nuriko, and Chiriko," Myojuan calculated, "it stands to reason that, at the time, he didn’t remember anything from his past life. Whether he does now or not is another matter…"

"Who the fuck is Nakago?" growled Genrou, and everyone focused on him.

Silence.

"He was a Seiryuu seishi," Taka explained. "The one in control. He manipulated Yui into believing Miaka was against her…he sent Suboshi to slaughter my family…and Ashitare…"

"He killed you," I interrupted quietly, my eyes on Sai…only on Sai. I saw the slight furrow in his brow, the pallor to his cheeks, the way he was jutting his jaw out just far enough so that I knew it was to make it stop trembling from anger or…or fear. "He killed you. You told me." To see Sai like this made my heart twist painfully, and I suddenly hated the befuddled policeman more than anyone else in the world. He’d hurt Hotohori-sama, and I took such things very personally… even if it wasn’t fair, even if he was nothing like his former self, how could I accept anyone whose spirit had hurt the one person I loved above all others?

Sai looked at me then, his expression tired, apology evident in his perfect features. "That was in the past," he affirmed, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that along with everyone else. "We can’t afford to hold grudges." He looked up at Myojuan, who nodded solemnly

A silent voice inside my head said yes.

"Ryuuen."

I looked at my fist, which Sai had brought up to chest level; it was clenched tight, the knuckles white, and beneath my fingernails was a faint but growing pool of red. Giving me a worried look, Sai covered my fist with his own hand, pulling at my fingers to unfurl them. I relaxed in a second, startled at the blood, and he took my hand between his and held it gently.

Quickly glancing at the others, I took a shaky breath and gave them a huge smile. "Aha…well, that’s what you get when you forget your own power!" I wanted to pull away; for the second time that day, the need to take a bath or a shower tugged at me, but I swallowed it forcefully. That wasn’t as important as what we were discussing, and I was selfish to think about something so petty when the world was at stake.

"Nakago," Genrou muttered, rubbing his head. "Fuckin kidding me."

"There’s no reason to believe he’s still…uhh…" Taka began.

"A psychotic freak?" Miaka supplied.

"What we do know is that, given half a chance, he has the potential to be a formidable power," said Myojuan, grabbing his coat from where he’d just hung it and putting it on again. "We need to pay him a visit, and hope we’re the first ones to find him."

~*~

Sai was silent all the way to the police station, and I couldn’t imagine what he could be dealing with. He sat there staring out the window, a slight frown on his face, tearing his eyes away only momentarily to give me half-hearted looks that were supposed to be reassuring, but I wasn’t fooled. I tried to imagine how I would feel if I were going to meet Ashitare…but I don’t think my imagination did it justice at all. Ashitare had been a puppet. Nakago had been the Jim Henson of Kutou.

It ate at me. I knew he wasn’t feeling well—not physically, I mean, but emotionally—with this in addition to what had happened with me, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything but sit with him in the back of Myojuan’s car and hold his hand.

I wanted to hold him, to comfort him more effectively somehow…but I knew that wasn’t what he wanted right then. He needed to feel strong, in control. And though I didn’t want to admit it, I knew that Sai was right: despite what Nakago had done in the past, we had to give him the benefit of the doubt. It would be harder to convince himself of that if he let himself give in to whatever pain he must be feeling.

It was dinner time when we arrived—me, Genrou, Sai, and Myojuan, that is, since Taka and Miaka had stayed behind with their "group." My stomach was highly aware of the hour. I hadn’t had anything but a Pepsi One all day, and it was making me feel a little dizzy. But I knew the rumbling in my tummy would stop after a while, so I ignored it and stuck close to Sai’s side as we made our way to the door.

But when we stepped into the front office, there he was, sitting straight and calm and sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. His glasses perched delicately on the end of his nose, and he looked up in surprise upon our arrival, setting his paperwork aside.

"Can I help you?" he said, his voice even deeper than Sai’s. He took off his glasses and set them on the table, regarding us with tired, watery blue eyes.

I found that I was clenching my fists again.

You killed Hotohori-sama. You killed him. And you don’t even have the decency to remember. If I had been there, I would have ripped you apart…I would have…

"You don’t remember, do you?" Myojuan said evenly, his face void of expression, and I thanked Suzaku that one of us was smart enough to keep his emotions in check. I knew I was being unfair. Frankly, the vehemence of my hatred scared me…but it was a displaced kind of fear, at the very bottom of my heart, where I could conveniently forget about it.

Something flickered through the icy blue eyes, and the officer faltered before giving us a hesitant smile. "Ah, you two…yes, you were here in the autumn, weren’t you? Something about a magical…flame-throwing device or sorts? What can I do for you?" It was me and Genrou he was talking to, though I noticed he gave Sai a perturbed look.

He knows something. He knew something then, and he knows something now. He knows we’re connected somehow, even if he doesn’t know why or how.

Apparently, Myojuan sensed this, as well. "I think you know I don’t mean that. Nakago."

The man’s eyes widened, and he stood up slowly. "Now, look," he said calmly, "I don’t know what you four want, but just watch where you step. This is a police station, and you’re fools if you think you can get away with…"

"We don’t want to hurt you," Sai interrupted, soothing with a touch of steel. "We need to talk to you."

Again, the uncomfortable flicker in his eyes. "If it’s about what happened last fall…what, you want me to get somebody off again?" The officer had dropped his voice to a murmur, perhaps wary of anyone else who might be listening in. He shook his head. "Sorry. That…was a fluke. A one-time thing…hell, I can’t explain it. You guys are damn lucky. But don’t think for a second that you have ‘connections’ in the PD, because I don’t work like that, get me? That time was…"

"Fuck, man, ya wanna shut up for three seconds?" Genrou growled.

"If ya fuckin shut your mouth and give us time to fuckin explain shit, you’ll know we’re not here to ask you any goddamn favors!" my friend continued.

"Tasuki," murmured Myojuan, "I fear that isn’t exactly the way in which one would want to speak to a policeman."

Sai met the man’s eyes, unflinching, his face cool and imperial. "Please. It’s important."

"Very well; fine, then," said Nakago Incarnate, crossing his arms solidly and giving us a steady look. "You want to talk to me? Then talk."

Sorry if it’s too sappy/too dramatic/bad. ^_^()

Genrou: I think he’s a seishi. Now that we’ve been seishi long enough to recognize the goddamn seishi linkage feelin, I think…he might be worth checkin out.

(Half an hour later, at the police station…)

Genrou: Heyyy, lookin good, man! You work out? Yeah, I’d take you home any time!

Nakago: --;;

Ryuuen: I knew it!! I knew you were gay!!

Kouji: What??? Genrou’s gay?

Houjun: He is, no da??!??

(Kouji and Houjun start preening)

Ryuuen: ^_^()

Genrou: --;;;;;;;;;;;; Care to talk to me in private, Ryuu-chan?

YET ANOTHER STORY AKUGI: TAKE TWO!!

 Ryuuen: **narrating** Ashitare had been a puppet. Nakago had been the Jim Henson of Kutou.

Nakago: **sitting in a swamp and strumming a banjo** Why are there so many songs about rainbows…

All: **die**